Unsanctioned Bowing Methods: The Bendiness of Jade Bamboo Pu’erh & Certain Ceremonies
In which a mail-order tea convinces me that questions will suffice, honesty will prevail, and flutes will lead the way out of the trap.
I tried to draw lines in the sands of my tatami, but it seems they are already far too full of demarcation. There were supposed to be no laptops in the tearoom. Yet here in the tearoom with a laptop I now sit.
The tea in the cup(s) is a 2018 Baoshan Sheng Puerh named “Jade Bamboo” from the Good People at Global Tea Hut. Careful, I’m already around seven steeps in and racing after Andre 3000 into the forgotten corners of Topanga Canyon via the song “Conversations” off of Señor Tres Stacks New Blue Sun’s alt-Rick Rubin musical spirit guide Carlos Niño, who’s album (I’m Just) Chillin, On Fire forms the trident (with MAF’s Les Jardin Mystiques) of a magic wand that’s sending the world fidget spinning into the loving embrace of ambient-avant-naturecore . If that sentence wasn’t confusing enough, then I don’t know what else to do to try to break your musical and orientational compasses. So on to the questions we begrudgingly march.
Where are the lines, who gets to draw them and when does anyone else get to have a say in the line assembly line?
This question sando could apply to a rather vast and specific number of questions on the tops of our minds right now. In my case, as I continue surging through Alex Kerr’s catalog of books about Japan, I am thinking about them in terms of the power of aesthetic tradition. Of breaking or not breaking certain types of canvases—like when they can spread through every sliding door/wall in a temple to create a canvas half the size of the Sistine Chapel without a whisper. I’m also thinking about them in terms of tradition, which itself a concept I’ve felt delineated from as a product of post-hippie ski bum culture. A crusade, at its core, driven by dysfunction.
For those who enjoy getting more specific, questions about lines continue to slice my tea journey in two—but rarely the same two.
This time last week I was sitting in my first formal Urasenke Tea Ceremony class. Oddly enough I can see the place where I took the class right now through my window, since my neighbor is the teacher. So it’s just over the bamboo hedge. Inside that structure kneels Sensei, as we speak, teaching another class: Raku bowls twisting twice, scrolls and incense trays being admired in the tokonoma alcove, scoops scooped up and adored. Should I be there with her? Or here with you? Or somewhere else? When tea is dry it breaks, when it’s soft it bends, and when it’s powdered it just floats wherever you send it.
Much of the week since has been sliced into further separations. An inability to communicate clearly with a beloved friend visiting town within our shifting contexts. Big news, small news, and no news.
Which parts of these or any experience are profane and which parts are sacred? Ordinary and extraordinary? Reverent and irreverent? Too much dust or too little? If tea and zen are one flavor, then what happens when you lose track of how much of each went into the pot? How is it supposed to feel when you suddenly want to live to see 100 after a lifetime of calculating early exits? What did your face look like before your parents were born? How can anyone, ever create art that competes with how late afternoon sunlight casts itself on any empty floor or on a couple holding hands on a Saturday train? Should we bow in praise of shadows and clap in praise of light?
In the editorial letter for the latest issue of Magazine F about Tea—a branch of the Korea-based Magazine B that I was turned onto another dear friend and loyal reader of these dispatches and features the likes of Chiyaba, Sakurai, and A.Drop in the latest issue—the VCEO (a new acronym for me) of the umbrella company that makes the magazine, Bongjin Kim, said the following:
“If tea became readily available and easy to enjoy in everyday life, demand would consequently skyrocket, too.”
Immediately, I found myself asking whether that wasn’t all backwards.
If we became readily available and easy to find enjoyment in our everyday life, demand for tea would consequently skyrocket, too.
But of course, we’re not available—no matter how many times Sean Paul remixes Davido’s summer jam, we are “Unavailable.”
And of course it’s not easy to find enjoyment in our everyday life, because the systems that surround us demand that demands skyrocket—in other words, that we must feel the fangs of true lack and lean forward lest we miss out on all the slices of pie on the cutting board. Or else the knife be turned towards us, next.
Or we must lean back at that sorry state of things and try to opt out. No pie. Please.
The third option: just sitting, being instead of doing, neutrality isn’t just forgotten. It’s erased. The white space on painting is invisible. We can’t see the screen upon which the scenes are playing out. Not caring whether or not demand goes up in demand.
And so, when unavailable and unable to simply sit and do nothing, the whole craziness begins again. We are either living or dying. This is either a ceremony or a sloshing of water. These words are either carefully managed or upchucked.
And what is real tea and how is it different than realty—which sounds like a pun but isn’t when you think of the scarcity of great teahouses—and for that matter, if we want to bring ourselves into the mix as an ‘I’, where is reality in all this?
Is the real tea the emerald magical glow of matcha? Is the dark, clumpy earthiness of pu’erh? And do we look at tea a product, comparing brands? Or as a gateway to the sacred? And do we turn to authors born in 733 or books released in 2022? Do we try to talk about tea in terms of wine or in terms of coffee? Do we submit to whoever did it first, did it best? Do we prize the softer brews gifted by silver lined cups or the beauty glass can puts display?
The funny part is that tea quite obviously does not care. They just told me so. And as I lean back and try to sit up straight I can’t tell if the pain below my right shoulder is from trying to sit neutrally or old knots fighting for old slouchy ways, where I managed to lean back and forward at the same time.
Later in the editorial letter, Bongjin Kim is asked about how he enjoys his tea and what’s his favorite memory of it. His story is full of availability and easy enjoyment:
“When I’m with my kids, I drink a lot of tea. You know you cannot drink coffee or alcohol with your little ones around. (laughs) So when I chat with my kids or play board games, we drink tea. My children have developed their own tea making know-how. My youngest waits for two or three minutes after the water comes to a boil, and then pours the water into the teapot. Then, the tea steeps slowly before she strains it two or three times. The final result is a really smooth tea. We haven’t taken any formal tea-making classes or anything, so it’s not a sanctioned method so to speak. But we have a lot of fun, and the tea is tasty, which is good enough for me. Having teatime alone is nice and relaxing, but I like sharing that time with my kids.”
I’m a relative tea beginner but from where I am sitting, some of the ceremonial stuff can turn, for lack of a better word, into some gang shit pretty quickly. Tradition breeds abuse at least as often as it does peace of mind.
In any event, I’m no martial artist. My tearoom is no dojo. I have no answers and am unable to draw straight lines. I’m just a guy who loves tea and loves myself and deep down loves unsanctioned methods far more than sanctioned ones.
So let’s have a lot of fun. The tea is tasty. Which is good enough for all of us. Having teatime alone is nice and relaxing but sharing that time with you all feels like something more precious than words locate but I won’t stop using them as flashlights in pursuit. I hear the faint sound of flutes just around the corner.
Good thoughts. I AM a martial artist, as well as a lover of tea. I see them as very compatible (like other arts), but not a lot of overlap..if anything, most of the martial artists I l’ve encountered tend heavily towards alcohol..and most of the serious tea people I’ve known are not very physical, which is a shame. I like taking my tea backpacking, that’s the best place to enjoy, filtering water straight from a stream.
Sadly, in their rush to be as modern, western, and successful as possible, there’s virtually no tea or tea culture left in Korea, people really love coffee there..or at least want to pretend they do.